The most successful businesses are those with confidence in their ability to store, access and use data effectively. Rather than focusing on the nuts and bolts of storage, this view point looks at the data it holds and more importantly, what can be done with it.

This review looks at why small businesses need to stop being complacent about their networks and at what they can do to maintain their competitive edge as they follow the big boys down the route of increasing collaboration and other bandwidth-hungry applications likely to impact on network performance and availability.

In total 42,500 user accounts were targeted and Google said 65 percent of requests led to some data being given up. This suggests at least 16,770 accounts were affected although it could be as high as 27,000.

V3 contacted Google for a breakdown of whether the 65 percent referred to the 25,879 requests or 42,500 user accounts, but had not received a reply by the time of publication.

While the number of requests rose Google said the number of times it complied with the demands is the lowest since it started producing data on how often it releases information on its users.

Overall, the number of requests received is double the number of requests made in the first half of 2009 (12,539) when Google first started reporting government data requests and comes amid major concerns at the extent of web spying, as revealed by the PRISM scandal.

Germany: 2,311 requests - 48 percent led to some data being handed over

France: 2,011 requests - 49 percent led to some data being handed over

UK: 1,274 requests - 67 percent led to some data being handed over

Google also used the release of its latest transparency report to highlight its ongoing concerns with the fact requests under Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) laws cannot be revealed. It included a blacked-out chart to demonstrate this gag (pictured above).

Richard Salgado, legal director for law enforcement and information security at Google, said the firm wanted to reveal this information but was forbidden from doing so.